Following No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford came a third masterpiece of 2007 to be set in the west. All three depict very different worlds, and all three are resoundingly successful in recreating them. All three have, in different ways, contentious endings, and though the ending of There Will be Blood may not be quite as out there as the Coens’ film, it comes darned close. Andrew Dominik’s film about the legendary outlaw took the documentaries of Ken Burns as inspiration, while the Coens were indebted to John Sayles’ Lone Star and their own earlier works. Anderson borrows left, right and centre, from George Stevens’ Giant (it was shot in much the same location), from John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, from Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed, from the visual palette of Terence Malick (helped by employing Malick’s old designer Jack Fisk) and even the stylistic touches of Stanley Kubrick. Not only that, but he creates a film worthy of comparison to all of them.

After making his fortune in gold and silver at the turn of the century, Daniel Plainview turns his attention to the black gold, trying to set up drills throughout the Midwest and con naïve homesteaders out of their property for peanuts. He travels with his small boy, H.W., and, following the tip off of one Paul Sunday, he turns up at the Sunday property in Little Boston, California, with the intention of getting rich on the oil just waiting to be pumped. While there, he runs into competition from the young fire and brimstone teacher, none other than Paul’s twin brother, Eli. Their confrontation ultimately proves fatal to one of them.

At first glance, Blood may seem a more subdued film for Anderson, with none of the trademark camera flourishes of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Yet the stylistic subtexts are clear to see, and the influence of Kubrick is most striking. Take the opening prologue set in 1898, which retrospectively seems to evoke the Dawn of Man sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and compare it to the finale, which not only evokes the apes at the watering hole but Alex and his droogs at the casino in A Clockwork Orange, only with a bowling pin the weapon of choice rather than a large bone or cane. (As if to emphasise the parallel, he accompanies the credits with a bit of Brahms.) He’s not afraid to make the film basically a two-header, as no other actor besides Day-Lewis and Dano get a look in and, with Day-Lewis holding centre stage throughout. To say that it is a magnificent performance is not even close. It’s not only his greatest performance but one of the great performances of 21st century cinema. On one level, there are similarities to his previous psychotic, Bill Cutting, in Gangs of New York, but to listen to, though there’s just a hint of Sean Connery in there, he’s essentially a mix of Walter and, especially, John Huston. That in itself is very much deliberate and at one with Anderson’s own vision, evoking memories of not only the aforementioned Madre but even more so John’s performance as the equally evil Noah Cross in Chinatown. Indeed, one could almost imagine Plainview and Cross related. Plainview deals in oil, Cross in water, but both tried to bleed California dry with sheer greed. To Plainview, in his parlance, it’s drinking the other fellow’s milk shake, to Cross it’s bringing Los Angeles to the water or vice versa. One could discuss the parallel till Doomsday, if we’re honest, but that would give us no time to mention the first time score of Radiohead’s Greenwood, whose almost minimalist strings could not be more perfect. There Will be Blood; there will be greatness.

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Over-Blown and Over-Rated — Lewis’ strong performance fails to save this pretentious and empty endeavour. Poorly written and visually pedestrian, the film is banal in it’s portentousness. In this unnecessary story of an empty, driven and insane man, we are no wiser in the last few minutes of ugly mayhem than in the confused first half-hour. Those who make facile comparisons with Citizen Kane have no understanding of film direction or of what makes great cinema.

LOL Tony!!! You surely swam against the tide with this one, but you make a quite a case. Funny, I will say that I liked it most on the first viewing. Subsequent viewings (3 to be exact) have oddly reduced its power. And I agree with you that the ending has always been problematic. I still think its a formidable achievement, but I quite understand and respect your position.

Joseph, if you see GREED in that class, I hope you will review it for “Cinexcellence.” I continue to grieve about what could have been with that film (the worst cinematic desecration of all time, including the mutilation of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS) but even with that little over two hour length its a masterpiece.

When looking up my NYT bit, I came across another reader review by “owenwilbur”, which gave the movie a rating of 1/5 and made some very profound and topical observations – a brilliant analysis to my mind:

“Maybe it isn’t meant to be liked… but to remind us, as we go off to remake the world in our image, that our image was forged in a terrible darkness… and might not be either as admirable or enviable as we have been taught, and as we like to believe. Did anyone who hated the film have a sneaking suspicion that while Citizen Kane was about Citizen Kane, a man who sucked up all and sundry about him including the available air, “There Will be Blood,” is about who WE are and what made US what we are today? And that maybe we should start doing something about tempering our heedless, thoughtless ambitions? Not only to get rich… which seems in retrospect relatively harmless, but our wrapping our greed in Messianic exceptionalism… I dunno… I was sitting, stunned, in the theater, and depressed when I left (art is not always elating, but always instructive) after watching this long and gloomy (and quite remarkable) parable of the two drives that seem to sum up our history, who made us, and what we are: greed and religious frenzy. Both still unattractive, ugly even but now dangerous to our survival as well.

Well, Tony, that is certainly a brilliant analysis, and there are others who share it. Owen Wilbur is quite the insightful fellow. I will leave Allan to defend the position he took in his overwhelmingly favorable review, but I will acknowledge that the film has polarized viewers, and I would venture to suggest that there is a dearth of emotional context in the narrative (“Messianic exceptionalism” at the forefront) and it is in the end very depressing, whether you revere its cinematic scope or not. Nihilism has reared its ugly head.

I’ve watched There Will Be Blood about 8 times and it gets better upon each viewing. I read somewhere that Anderson would turn on Treasure of the Sierra Madre every night after filming to get inspired for the next day. I watched Treasure for the first time the other night and can definitely see where his inspiration came from.

After watching The Shining again a few days ago, I’m sure Greenwood was inspired by the use of Bartok’s music in Kubrick’s film. They are so similar and both evoke so much dread.

Time has slowly reduced my own opinion of the film, which I have seen four times now.

I suppose one of my bigger complaints with Anderson is a little similar to Matt Zoller Seitz’s, namely that, while paying homage to various great films is always welcome, sometimes it seems like Anderson’s body of work primarily consists of one homage of a film Anderson cherishes, from a director he lionizes, after another.

That isn’t to suggest that he has little to say, because I think he does. And I maintain that There Will Be Blood represents quite the leap for its creator; seeing him in person when he showed it to the San Francisco Castro Theatre almost eleven months ago, and his contagious enthusiasm, was a treat just by itself.

It’s a tough one, and a tough watch. If I had to put an Anderson in the DVD player, it’d be Magnolia, but I think TWBB is his greatest film. Knocking it for homages in some ways feels like knocking Spielberg in Schindler’s List for his homages to Kubrick, Lean et al. They’re homages, after all, not blatant copies. But it does have its detractors, I can’t deny that.

I actually agree, Allan; my criticism, if it can be called that, I suppose has more to do with Anderson in general than There Will Be Blood, for which I believe all of the “homages” work just fine. I do consider his latest to be one of the five best of 2007, to be sure.

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Wonders in the Dark is a blog dedicated to the arts, especially film, theatre and music. An open forum is highly encouraged, as the site proctors are usually ready and able to engage with ongoing conversation.